6.  The applicants were born in 1936, 1934, 1930, 1971 and 1973 respectively, and live in Rome (Italy) and Tirana (Albania).
7.  In pre-war Albania, the applicants’ father owned a villa and adjacent land measuring 1,377 square metres situated in Tirana.
8.  In 1941 the Bank of Naples (“the Bank”) took a mortgage on the property, including the plot of land and the villa, as security for a loan the applicant had obtained from the bank. In 1945 the ownership of the Bank was transferred to the State, including the Bank’s liabilities, amongst which was the applicant’s loan.
9.  On 21 April 1948 the Military Supreme Court found the applicants’ father guilty of political offences, sentenced him to seven years’ imprisonment and ordered confiscation of half of his property which had been deposited as a mortgage. The confiscation was carried out by a decision of the Executive Committee of Tirana City Council (Komiteti Ekzekutiv i K.P. Qytetit Tiranë) of 20 July 1948.
10.  It transpires from the documents that ownership of the property was transferred to the State on 16 July 1957. On 4 September 1957, pursuant to Law no. 419 of 16 April 1947, the Ministry of Finance ordered the Mortgage Office to discharge the mortgage debt in relation to the applicants’ father’s property. On 5 October 1957 the applicants’ father sold his part of the property to P.D.
11.  In 1959 the State sold its part of the property to K.G. Consequently, in 1959 the villa and its adjacent land were co-owned by P.D. and K.G.
12.  On 8 October 1992, under the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression Act (Law no. 7514 of 30 September 1991), the financial unit of Tirana municipality allocated to the applicants the part of the villa owned at the material time by K.G., and half of the adjacent land. The municipality held that the property had been illegally confiscated and that consequently the applicants’ property rights should be restored in respect of that part of the property. Moreover, it ordered that the applicants’ title to the property be entered in the Tirana Land Registry.
13.  On an unspecified date K.G. lodged a civil action with the Tirana District Court, seeking to have the order granting title to the property annulled on the ground that he had been a bona fide purchaser. He maintained that the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression Act was not applicable to private properties. Moreover, K.G. submitted that the villa had been transferred to the State because of the failure of the applicants’ father to pay off the mortgage.
14.  On 16 February 1995 the Tirana District Court rejected K.G.’s claim as ill-founded.
15.  On 26 April 1995, following K.G.’s action, the Tirana Court of Appeal quashed the District Court’s judgment and, deciding on the merits, declared the order granting title to the property null and void since it had been issued by an authority not competent to decide on the matter. Moreover, the court designated the Commission on the Restitution and Compensation of Property (“the Commission”) as the competent authority to rule on restitution of property issues.
16.  On an unspecified date the applicants lodged an appeal with the Supreme Court. On 7 July 1995 the Civil Division of the Supreme Court quashed the Court of Appeal judgment, finding that the order granting title to the property had been issued in 1992, that is to say, one year before the Commission was established. Consequently, the court held that the order should be considered as certifying lawful title.
17.  On an unspecified date the President of the Supreme Court lodged an application for supervisory review. He alleged that the Supreme Court’s judgment of 7 July 1995 had not been based on the law and that the Restitution and Compensation of Property Act should apply. On 22 May 1996 the Supreme Court (Joint Bench) quashed the Supreme Court judgment of 7 July 1995 and remitted the case to the Tirana District Court for fresh examination.
18.  On 7 October 1996 the Tirana District Court rejected K.G.’s claim, upholding the applicants’ property rights over the villa on the ground that their ownership rights in relation to the villa had the force of res judicata: the matter had been ruled on firstly in the Supreme Court judgment of 7 July 1995, in so far as it upheld the validity of the order granting title to the property, and secondly in the Commission decision of 29 August 1996 (see paragraphs 20-21 below).
19.  On 2 December 1996 and 5 February 1998 respectively, the Tirana Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court rejected K.G.’s claim, upholding the Tirana District Court’s judgment.
20.  On an unspecified date, while the proceedings on the validity of the order granting title to the property were pending before the Tirana Court of Appeal, the applicants lodged an application with the Commission claiming property rights over the confiscated part of the villa.
21.  On 29 August 1996 the Commission allocated the confiscated part of the villa to the applicants.
22.  On an unspecified date K.G. brought a civil action before the Tirana District Court seeking to have the Commission decision of 29 August 1996 declared null and void. According to K.G.’s submissions, his part of the villa had been confiscated by the State on the ground that the applicants’ father had failed to pay off the mortgage in 1947.
23.  On 19 May 1997 the Tirana District Court declared null and void the Commission decision of 29 August 1996 on the ground that K.G. had been a bona fide purchaser. The court held that the confiscation of the applicants’ father’s property had been due to the failure of the latter to pay off the mortgage and had not been carried out in execution of the Military Criminal Court sentence.
24.  On 1 August 1997 and 16 January 1998 respectively, the Tirana Court of Appeal and the Civil Division of the Supreme Court rejected the applicants’ appeals as ill-founded.
25.  The applicants lodged an appeal with the Constitutional Court on the basis of Article 131 § f of the Constitution, arguing that the above courts’ judgments were unconstitutional on grounds of estoppel per rem judicatam.
26.  In that connection the applicants maintained that the issue of title to the villa had been decided in their favour by the Tirana municipality decision of 8 October 1992, which had become final and enforceable firstly by reason of the Supreme Court’s judgment of 7 July 1995 in the ordinary proceedings, and then as a result of the same court’s judgment of 5 February 1998 in the supervisory review proceedings.
27.  On 29 October 1998 the Constitutional Court quashed the courts’ judgments relating to the validity of the Commission decision of 29 August 1996 as unconstitutional. The court found as follows:
“The proceedings were unfair on two counts:
Firstly, the Commission violated the rules on jurisdiction set forth in Article 36 of the Code of Civil Procedure. According to this provision the Commission, as a non‑judicial institution, was not empowered to examine this civil dispute and adopt a decision, in so far as the issue was pending before the courts.
Secondly, ... the Commission was not authorised to examine this issue, as it had been decided upon some years ago by the financial unit of Tirana municipality. In 1992 the financial unit, by means of a decision, awarded this part of the house to the heirs of ... [that is, the applicants].
...
Under these circumstances, the court considers the 1996 Commission decision to be null and void. As such, it cannot produce any effects, even though the financial unit of the municipality of Tirana had previously addressed the issue and reached the same conclusion.
By ruling in favour of K.G., the District Court and the Court of Appeal denied the applicants their property rights and conducted an unfair trial.
The violation of this constitutional right, which occurred at the three instances, consisted in the violation of the salient procedural principle according to which final judicial rulings are binding on the court and the parties to the proceedings and cannot be reviewed unless they are quashed by a higher court, or other requests for judicial review or challenges by third parties are being examined.
... the courts that examined this action by the interested party were not mindful of the fact that the claims in question were also the subject of another action against the applicant. The District Court rejected the other action as ill-founded and its judgment was upheld by the Court of Appeal in December 1996, thus becoming final.
Despite the fact that the court does not consider the judgment in question to have the force of res judicata, in the light of the differences in the constituent elements of the actions, their object in the material sense was nevertheless the same, namely the challenging of the applicants’ property rights by the defendant ...
... the court was not empowered to examine the merits of the case and reach a different conclusion from that of the first court, since in the instant case it was not examining any special request for judicial review.”
28.  On an unspecified date K.G. brought a civil action in the Tirana District Court seeking to have the Commission decision of 29 August 1996 set aside in compliance with the Constitutional Court’s judgment of 29 October 1998.
29.  On 4 June 1999 the Tirana District Court declared the Commission decision of 29 August 1996 null and void.
30.  On 10 February 2000 and 24 July 2000 respectively the Tirana Court of Appeal and the Civil Division of the Supreme Court dismissed the applicants’ appeals as ill-founded.
31.  On an unspecified date K.G. lodged an application with the Supreme Court for supervisory review of the Tirana District Court’s judgment of 7 October 1996, the Tirana Court of Appeal judgment of 2 December 1996 and the Supreme Court’s judgment of 5 February 1998, as being in breach of the substantive laws.
32.  On 12 May 2000 the Supreme Court (Joint Bench), ruling in supervisory review proceedings, quashed the above-mentioned judgments and, deciding on the merits, declared null and void the order of 8 October 1992 granting title to the property.
33.  The applicants lodged an appeal with the Constitutional Court on the basis of Article 131 § f of the Constitution.
34.  On 3 July 2002 the Constitutional Court decided de plano to declare the applicants’ appeal inadmissible as being “outside its jurisdiction”.